Accessibility of Short URLs
Excerpted from the December 16th blog post on the DigitalGov blog. Although written for social media experts in government, this is good information for anyone sharing information via social media.
Short URLs can actually be beneficial for people using assistive technologies because it shortens the reading time and the cognitive load that longer URLs can create. Imagine listening to http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Government-Unclaimed-Money.shtml being read aloud versus http://go.usa.gov/WhzY.
With that in mind, you should avoid using the short URL as the link title, such as “Click here: http://go.usa.gov/Whtm.” (It’s never a good idea to use “click here,” but that’s a story for another day.) It’s ok to use a short URL as the link when you use actual words as the link title, such as “Learn more about short URLs.”
You can’t follow this rule when writing messages for social media because there isn’t the option to use a link title. Instead, give a good description first so users can decide if they want to click the link, such as “You can learn more about how to create short .gov URLs at http://go.usa.gov/Whtm.” Learn more about making social media accessible.
